


it's why i'm easy

by orphanbeat



Category: The Beatles (Band)
Genre: Anxiety, Drug Addiction, M/M, Manipulation, Paranoia, Suicidal Ideation, Unhealthy Relationships, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-31
Updated: 2020-05-31
Packaged: 2021-03-03 00:13:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,877
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24475555
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphanbeat/pseuds/orphanbeat
Summary: Amidst tensions while recording The White Album, John accidentally reveals too much while laying down vocals for Dear Prudence.
Relationships: John Lennon/Paul McCartney
Comments: 8
Kudos: 74





	it's why i'm easy

**Author's Note:**

> NO DEFAMATION INTENDED! All that good stuff!
> 
> This goes a little dark, I won't lie. So, please heed the tags. Particularly 'Drug Addiction'; this is told entirely through the lens of totally paranoid drug use.
> 
> I've been writing so much John-centric stuff lately, it was almost like I forgot that Paul is my favourite. I think he took the brunt of a lot of heavy and unfair shit during these years and he held it together publicly for so long that I forget how horrible it probably was. Bless his heart, and I just thought, maybe he's allowed to show a little anger too. 
> 
> Also, sorry, this is completely unproofread because I just wanted its catharsis, and then to forget about it entirely! You know, the healthy shit. :/

Paul tinkers at a new song on his acoustic; he tries to imagine where George or John might fit into it and he can’t. He feels alone as he sings it; the lyrics are lonely too. He thinks it’s _Yesterday_ all over, but has to wonder if anyone is still invested enough to be pissed off by it. Likely not. John doesn’t care. The music is the music and John will hear Paul’s shit when it comes out on the album. Christ, John’s spent all of his time in a separate studio, recording everything, down to the backing vocals, in his own songs himself. He doesn’t care.

Except for the bass line, Paul supposes. Paul will always have a say in the bass line. He thinks that that’s the only real way that they speak to one another anymore. John speaks to him through song, and Paul gets to thump something back to him that brings the whole thing together. He imagines it’s the only thing of his that John will actually listen to.

The buzzer at the front door goes off and Paul realizes just how tired he is. Tired of all the things that make him a Beatle. He’s been exhausted since Rishikesh. And not the sort that can be fixed with a good night’s sleep, or hell, a line of coke, which is more truthfully what he’s been using to put some life back into himself. 

It buzzes again; rhythmic and coded. It’s one of the other three. Whoever it is bats at button, ringing out _one-two-three, one-two-three, one-two, one-two, one-two-three_. It’s the only way any of them could get his attention without just climbing over the gate. Anything outside of that rhythm, it’s just another scruff. Just another person who doesn’t understand what it’s like to be one of them. 

Paul stands, goes to his front door, and peers out the small window next to it to see if he can catch a sliver of whoever it is through his front gate. He thinks _don’t be John, don’t be John, don’t be John_ , until the intercom buzzes again, and it’s no more fervent. Paul breathes a sigh of relief: it’s too patient to be John. Too determined to be George too. So, that only leaves one. 

He pulls open his front door, steps out onto the cobblestoned drive barefoot and takes it as a jog towards the gate. “I’m coming, Rings,” he shouts. He pulls open his gate and Ringo shifts inside immediately muttering something about the crowd hanging out on the sidewalk. 

“I don’t know how you do it,” Ringo mumbles. Paul takes in the way his hands are stuffed deep into his pockets, notices the way they haven’t come out to give Paul a quick hug. 

“You get used to it,” Paul mumbles back. He puts his arm around Ringo’s shoulders and guides him towards the house. “They’re just excited.”

“Still,” Ringo sarcastically marvels. “After all these years.”

Paul falters. He takes his arm off of Ringo’s shoulders and gives him a quick, solitary pat between the shoulder blades. He knew that that warm excitement had left John and George, but he hadn’t thought he’d be left alone to protect it himself. 

“Would you like some tea?” Paul asks, shutting the door behind them. 

Ringo awkwardly steps inside, looks out over the quiet sitting room. He’s been here countless times, but today, he’s looking at it differently. Like he means to memorize it. “Is Jane in?” he asks, ignoring Paul’s offering for tea, and Paul holds still. He realizes he hasn't told anyone that she's left yet. He realizes this is the perfect moment to do so, but he can't remember the last time he allowed himself to be so open and vulnerable with the men who were meant to be his closest friends. So, he swallows it down somewhere deep. It's what they do with one another these days.

“No,” he says, then heads towards the kitchen. 

Ringo follows him. He leans back against the dinner table while Paul fumbles with the kettle and a few cups. He looks over his shoulder and sees that Ringo is studying some bits of paper Paul had left out. Songs, bits of lyrics, to-do lists. Everything that makes him tick. He sees Ringo smile at whatever he’s reading fondly. 

“You still practice your autograph,” Ringo observes. 

Paul feels his cheeks go hot. He shrugs, turning back to the kettle. “A habit, I suppose.” Ringo hums in agreement. “Same as a doodle.”

“I forget how much I wanted this,” Ringo says, and it gives Paul pause. He sets the kettle down on the stove, and turns fully towards his friend. He crosses his arms over his chest and waits. Waits for some sort of explanation about what Ringo means by _this_ . “It doesn’t always feel the way I thought it might.” Paul inhales sharply. He looks down at the tiled floor of his kitchen and thinks: _don’t say it_. Don’t put words to this strange, stilted sadness that’s taken up behind his rib cage. 

“Stopping touring was good,” Paul says, stubbornly _not going there_. “That’s made things better,” he adds, he knows it’s a lie even before Ringo looks up at him and silently calls him on it. 

“I feel out of practice,” Ringo admits. 

“You’re _good_ ,” Paul tells him honestly, though he knows he’s recorded a few takes behind the drumset himself. 

“I’m older,” Ringo says, ignoring him. “I should feel like I’m getting better, but I don’t.” He shrugs helplessly. “There isn’t much for me to do when we’ve got an orchestra.” Paul wants to feel sorry for the months they spent recording _Pepper_ , but he doesn’t. It had made him feel elated and alive and creative in a way that he hadn’t since he first began writing songs. 

“This album’s proper rock and roll,” Paul says, as if that might make 1967 easier for Ringo, in retrospect. It doesn’t. “Can’t do rock and roll without a bloody good drummer.”

Ringo shakes his head while Paul speaks and before Paul’s even shut his mouth, Ringo tells him: “I think I’m gonna leave the band.”

Paul holds stoic. He feels his own fingernails digs into his forearms. He looks at Ringo and Ringo just looks back. Though, he looks sorry for it. The room’s still and silent; Paul can hear the faint whistle of boiling water underneath the rushing of blood in his head. “What?” he manages. 

“Yeah,” Ringo says, going for casual, but Paul can tell this is hurting Ringo as much as it’s hurting him. “My playing’s shit, and you three are really close --”

“ _Us three_ \--”

“Like, you’re all going the same direction.” 

Paul thinks of John and thinks that he’s never felt so disconnected from another human being in his life. He thinks of George and wonders how they’d even become friends all those years ago on the top tier of a double-decker bus. _You three_ . Paul hadn’t been a part of the mind-meld between John and George since they accidentally dropped acid together in 1965. It was a bond he’d thought they’d let Ringo in on simply because he _wasn’t Paul_. 

“I’m not --” Paul starts, shaking his head. “We’re not…” He thinks of John how he remembers him in 1963: smiling, curious, explosive and can’t bring himself to say he isn’t close to that person anymore. He can’t admit that there’s something lost between them. He thinks of John in Rishikesh, high on weed and too many hours spent in meditation, wanting to be let in closer. It’s his fault; Paul _knows_ it’s his fault. That he feels this way, that Ringo is leaving, that John is less John than Paul ever thought he could be. “I thought it was you three,” he says, because it’s the truth, but only the closest he’ll allow himself to get to the _fundamental truth_. 

Ringo chuckles to himself sadly, shaking his head. Paul feels himself go hot under the collar. He hugs his arms closer to his chest. “What?” he asks defensively. 

“That’s just what John said,” Ringo tells him, and Paul feels the world fall out from under him. It’s the first moment of connection he’s felt with John in months. He clings onto it for dear life and hopes that wherever he is, whoever he’s with, John will feel it. 

“You’ve told John, then?” Paul manages to ask. 

Ringo nods. “George is next. I suppose he’ll probably say the same thing.” Paul smiles, but there’s something bitter inside him that knows he won’t. He’d probably say: _take me with you_. And Ringo probably would. And hell, that’d be Paul’s fault too, for making George feel that way. 

“When did we all get so clingy?” Paul asks, when he realizes that Ringo is waiting for him to add something. It’s the wrong thing to have said, Ringo makes that abundantly clear, but he can’t be arsed to think of what the right thing might be. 

“It’s the drugs making us paranoid,” Ringo says. It’s as much a serious concern as it is a bitter jab at where it hurts. “Maybe we ought to lay off them for a little while.”

“Yeah,” Paul agrees, but they both know that none of them will. 

\--

Paul doesn’t say the thing that makes Ringo stay. Neither do John or George. Because it’s just the three of them the next time that Paul walks into Abbey Road Studios, and he thinks he might be sick. They spend the first hour tinkering away at their guitars, putting them out of tune and pulling them back in. Sipping at endless cups of tea. All the while, lamenting the empty space behind the drum kit. 

“I suppose we should sing something,” John finally says, because the alternative: _talking_ about their loss, feels too daunting. 

“Yeah,” Paul agrees, even George nods next to him. 

“Have you got one of yours?” John asks him. Paul looks up and sees John for the first time in months. His hair is longer, he’s always wearing his glasses, but he’s John. Paul swallows hard. He realizes he doesn’t want to hear the sound of his own voice. He wants to hear John’s, the way he remembers it. The way it had sounded to him the day they met in Woolton. The way it fit it’s way down Paul’s throat in a puzzle neither of them could understand. 

“Not really,” he says, hating the way George is watching him now that his voice is caught. “Let’s do one of yours.”

John and George glance at one another, and Paul sees that they miss. Their mind-meld is broken too. Maybe broken for the way that Paul has found himself back behind John’s eyes. It doesn’t matter. There isn’t enough room for the three of them. It makes Paul sad. That they each can’t love two people as much as they want to because there isn’t enough room. You have to top out eventually. If you didn’t, you’d lose yourself to the relentless pull of love. 

“We could do the vocals for Prudence,” John offers and Paul nods. He and John are together again. There may not be enough room for them all, but they’d be damned if they didn’t try to fit themselves around a microphone. 

John sings and Paul loses what year it is. He isn’t sure if they’re in the past or in the future. It feels safe, wherever it is. Paul and George sing too, and something comes alive in them. Something that makes them all feel like Ringo is still here, like they’re on the plane to America, like there’s something special about them when they work together. 

Paul smiles at John over the microphone, can feel George smiling at him the same way, as they sing: _greet the brand new day_ , and it doesn’t feel as frightening as it had when they woke up that morning. 

Paul feels John crawl out of himself, look directly at Paul, and sing: _it’s beautiful, and so you are_ , before he retreats somewhere so down low that Paul thinks he might never see him again. Paul sings the rest of the session as though the song wasn’t about somebody called Prudence. He sings over the microphone, and thinks, it doesn’t even matter if he doesn’t commit it to record, he just wants John to hear him. 

Paul thinks he ought to feel like he’s floating. George feels that way. Paul would too, if he couldn’t feel how afraid John was opposite him. As soon as George Martin tells them they’ve got it, John excuses himself. Paul and George go up to the control booth to give it a listen. They both ignore the fact that John’s gone longer than he ought to be. 

“Ringo will come back,” Paul hears himself tell George once George Martin leaves them be. 

George nods. “Yeah, I know he will,” he says. He looks up at Paul and smiles; it’s sad in a way that tells Paul that their moment over the microphone is over. 

“We should send him a telegram,” Paul continues anyway. 

“If we can figure out where he’s gone,” George drawls, and Paul realizes he isn’t planning on letting him in. 

John joins them and his eyes are glassy with heroin. It’s the worst ending to a day that’s made Paul happy for the first time in months. Neither George or Paul bring attention to it, and John looks as though he wishes one of them would. He looks as though a fight may help him forget he’s spent the whole day telling people that he loves them when he doesn’t mean it. 

They listen to themselves as though they were other people. Paul loses John somewhere in the second verse and it makes him feel so empty that he wants to go home to Liverpool. He wants to be with John the way he wants to be with his mother. And he tells himself, listening to John’s singing voice, that John is right here; he’s _right here_ , close enough that Paul can touch him, but he can’t, not really. He’s gone, almost like his mother is gone. 

George Martin returns to call it a day and Paul is gracious for it. 

He hits the loo on his way out. He pauses, looks up at his own reflection in the mirror. Sees the dark stubble of his beard, his hair’s longer than he usually keeps it. He wonders if John recognizes him at all either. 

John’s still in his car in the parking lot when Paul goes out to start his walk towards Cavendish. Paul pauses on the studio front steps. He gazes across the lot, through John’s windshield, through his glasses, and _sees him_. John’s looking right back. He sucks at a cigarette, then throws a glance at the empty passenger seat next to him. Paul sighs, hates that he knows he’s being beckoned. He itches to go home, but he finds himself crossing the lot to John’s Rolls Royce. 

He climbs in the passenger side and sighs heavily as he pulls the door shut behind him. The world’s quiet around them. Like they’re trapped in a bubble. But it doesn’t make Paul feel safe, he just feels claustrophobic. John hands him a cigarette of his own and Paul takes it graciously. John doesn’t light it for him. He isn’t feeling that generous. 

“You alright?” Paul decides to ask. 

John takes a deep breath and looks out his window. “I shouldn’t have sang that song the way I did,” John says, keeping his eyes outside. Paul swallows hard; sees John the way he wants to keep him: across a microphone, thinking Paul is beautiful.

“I thought it sounded good,” Paul tries. 

“You know what I mean,” John interjects harshly. 

Paul chews on his cheek. He lights up his cigarette, ignoring the way that his hands are shaking, because he _knows_ what John means. John doesn’t want to love him anymore, but it comes pouring out of him, when there’s a song to be sung. Paul wants to tell him that it’s okay. That he can go on loving him and they can figure out how to make it clean. How to make sure they’re both happy and getting what they need. 

“John?” he tries. John shakes his head, so Paul reaches out and touches his elbows. “John,” he says again. 

“I just need a few minutes,” John says to the glass. “I need to come down before I drive. Just stay with me.” John looks at him when Paul doesn’t answer, like he’s afraid that Paul’s already left. He smiles when he realizes Paul hasn’t. It isn’t much of a smile, but it’s the graciousness and trust that Paul recognizes, so he mutters: “There you are again.”

“Where?” John says, his voice just above a whisper. 

“Here,” Paul says, looking him up and down. “You’re here again. You go in and out.” John goes stoic and unreadable in front of him, and Paul thinks he’s just proved his point. Paul smiles sadly, letting John know that he’s lost him again, letting him know that he’s safely tucked away from Paul’s prying eyes. 

“I’m not who I was when we met, Paul,” John admits. “That’s just called growing up.”

“I know what growing up is, John,” Paul pokes back. They use one another’s names when they’re angry. “It doesn’t mean I shouldn’t recognize you.”

John shrugs: allows that Paul’s probably right. It isn’t about growing up, after all. They both know it. It’s about breaking down the parts of yourself that you hate the most. It’s about hiding the scariest bits from the people who love you. “I’m still me,” John says stoically. “I’m just showing you the part of me that doesn’t love you.”

Paul feels like John’s just hit him. He feels whatever breath he’d had in his lungs disappear. He traces a line along the hem of his jeans because he doesn’t know what else to do. He’d known that something like this had to be true. It _had_ to be the way John was treating him. It was the only way any of this made sense. “Why?”

John shrugs again and Paul thinks he looks like a child. Paul suddenly hates Julia Baird with everything inside of him, even though he knows he’d loved her. Why hadn’t she just stayed? Why hadn’t she just showed John the proper way to love somebody? “Dunno,” he mutters. “It’s the only way I know how to be with you now.”

Paul feels his hands ball into fists. He thinks of Rishikesh. John had showed him love and it had all combusted, gone belly up, so he’d embraced hate instead. He thinks of Jane Asher, who’d left him, after everything, she’d still left him. And he’d deserved it. But he doesn’t think he deserves this. Or, doesn’t want to admit that maybe he does. Because admitting to the repentance would mean admitting to the sin: crushing someone without any defenses. 

“All because I don’t love you the right way?” Paul asks, and tells himself again: _he doesn’t deserve this_. 

“Yes,” John says and makes the whole thing feel too simple. 

“That’s not fair.”

Taking a long drag, John tells him: “I’m compartmentalizing,” and he sounds so cavalier that Paul wants to reach out and squeeze bruises into his bicep. 

“I’m a human being,” Paul says through gritted teeth. “You can’t _compartmentalize_ me--”

“If you’re there and I love you,” John says, shaking his head. “If you’re there every day, I’ll --...”

“You’ll what?”

John sighs. Paul sees him go to admit to something deep and dark, but then think better of it: “This is the only way I know how to come out of this alive,” he says, as if that will soften what he actually means. 

“You shouldn’t say that,” Paul tells him, inhaling his cigarette like it will keep him alive. Like it will keep John alive too. 

“I shouldn’t mean it either,” John tells him derisively. 

Paul shakes his head. He keeps his eyes forward through the windshield. He feels sick with how heavy he feels. How responsible he feels. He can’t carry this anymore. But knows full-well he can’t drop it either. 

“I don’t know what to do,” Paul tells him honestly. 

“Hate me back,” John urges. 

“ _No_ ,” Paul says. “It wouldn’t be true.”

“It doesn’t have to be true,” John says, and Paul can’t believe that John feels confident in his words. He means them with everything he has. Like, he’s been told it’s true so many times that he can’t help but believe it. Paul thinks of Yoko, wherever she is. He feels John in these words; but he feels her too. “It’ll get us through these years. And then…” He shrugs again, and he’s back to being John. “Maybe we’ll find our way back.”

“Is this what she’s told you to do?” Paul seethes. They both look at one another. Matching the other’s angry stares. Paul has to admit, it is easier to be angry than it is to be anguished. “To hate me because it’s easier?”

“She’s got nothing to do with it,” John bites back. 

“‘ _Compartmentalize_ ’”, Paul repeats back bitterly. “I’ve never heard you use that bloody word in your life.”

“Back off her, Paul,” John says, and he means it as though he might hit him. 

“Or what?” Paul eggs him on. “She’ll tell you thump me?”

“Fuck you,” John says, even though Paul expects a right jab to the teeth. He realizes that there isn’t a fight coming. There isn’t a fight left. 

“Fuck you too, John,” Paul tells him, and those words sit right somewhere in his chest. It feels better to say that than it does to beg: _love me_. “You’re right, you know,” Paul continues. “This is easier.”

He climbs out of the car before John can tell him to. He slams the door shut rougher than he ought to, and he doesn’t even hear John’s voice coming through the cracks telling him to calm down and get back inside. John just lets him go. _Wants_ him to go. 

He doesn’t remember the walk home from the studio, but he’s suddenly in front of Cavendish and there are girls waiting for him. They squeal with one another when they see him walking up the sidewalk towards them. It’s late and he’s so angry that he could hit a hole straight through his front gate. 

One of them asks for a picture and Paul thinks: _can’t you see I’m dying_? He shakes his head curtly, so she asks again. “Haven’t you got anything better to do?” Paul blusters at her, then turns on the others watching him with wide eyes. “Aren’t there new Beatles yet?” He imagines John, so unlike the John he’d been when they made it big. He imagines himself, just as different. He thinks, there are new Beatles. It’s just that nobody’s caught on yet. 

He shuts his gate on their protests, and knows he’ll regret it all. Knows that he’ll regret choosing to hate John in this moment. But it’s _easier_. And after all these years, don’t they deserve something easy?


End file.
